Usually, this trope is used for comedic effect, because it's hard to see it coming.

An extremely cute and/or tiny animal turns out to have a surprisingly loud cry. A gorgeous person has a voice that is grating beyond all possible belief. It often causes fear in other characters until one sees the speaker and is amazed such a horrifying noise could come out of something so innocuous.

Truth in Television, as anyone who has ever encountered a chihuahua must know. Also, having a surprisingly loud cry to scare the crap out of predators is a terrific defense mechanism if you are a tiny, cute animal who can't do much else. Some animals combine this with the ability to seemingly suddenly transform into a vicious monster. Either way, it isn't good for a predator's nerves.

A common trait of Mr. Muffykins, particularly the older, nastier versions. Not to be confused with Noisy Nature. Everyone is louder than they need to be in Noisy Nature.

Examples:

Nia Teppelin from Tengen Toppa Gurren Lagann, despite being an ADORABLE young lady, has one of the most grating voices ever. It's like listening to someone trying to be moe without knowing how.

Doesn't apply to her English voice actresses (Hynden Walch as a teenager and Bridget Hoffman as an adult), who both sound appropriately fairy-princess like.

In Pokémon, Misty's Togepi had an annoying cry when upset, notably in the mini-movie Pikachu's Vacation and even "All Fired Up".

Marill lets out an ear-shattering cry when scared, in For Cryin' Out Loud!. To make matters worse, this particular Marrill (a specially shy and easy-to-scare crybaby) is paired with Misty; she's driven crazy by the loud and incessant crying, and flips out on the poor thing, freaking it out again.

Larvitar also has an ear-piercing cry.

In The Ancient Puzzle of Pokémopolis, the day is saved by a gigantic Jigglypuff (with an EXTREMELY deep voice) singing the two battling giant Pokémon to sleep.

Koyomi (Yomi) from Azumanga Daioh the Animation is reasonably attractive, and has an okay speaking voice, but is quite dreadfully bad at singing, as her friends discovered when she took her turn on a karaoke video game... save for Tomo, who knew, and registered alarm when she announced her intention to sing. Which is made even more hilarious by the fact that her actress is actually quite good, as you hear in Yomi's image songs. As if Rie Tanaka couldn't sing.

Pretty much any character voiced by Sandy Fox will fall into the category of "loli".

Pretty much any character (especially those past childhood age) voiced by Greg Ayres will fall into this.

Sailor Moon's Usagi and Chibi-Usa manage to stun a monster with their screams — and Usagi has it as a weapon in the SNES fighting games. The game usage is probably a Mythology Gag, referencing her first fight as Sailor Moon, in which Usagi actually manages to stun a youma and its mind-controlled horde of drained humans with her crying.

It is said that, when they (Moon and Chibimoon) are transformed, their screams are amplified by the red hairclips they have on their odango and turned into supersonic waves, which is how they manage to cause so much damage. However, it does require a cry loud enough to activate this "weapon", apparently.

Ranma ˝: Kodachi Kuno technically has a Noblewoman's Laugh, but the shrill edge she has to it in the anime (particularly the first season) is so bad that it gives her an honorary placement here, even though many fans think she's not particularly cute. She gets better (well, less cacophonic) as the seasons pass, though.

Naga the Serpent has shrill tones, loud enough that it sounds like she's screaming more then she's laughing, and obnoxious as all hell. What's more, Naga is such a stuck-up, egotistical Cloudcuckoolander that she's convinced that her laugh is a thing of wonder and beauty, growing quite offended at those who voice their disgust with it and mocking those who can't laugh like her.

In one episode she gets cloned off about ten times. When faced with her giggling doppelgangers she calmly takes in what she's seeing for a moment before declaring them self-evident shams. Although the laugh sounds identical to the originals to our untrained ears, Naga critiques everything wrong with their laugh — whereupon they immediately attach themselves to her. Now, imagine Naga amplified by about eleven times. Even the guy who created the clones for his nefarious purposes is horrified. Just for fun, it's hard to catch since Naga Prime and her knockoffs are laughing the whole time, the scene where they come charging to the castle to rescue Lina is underscored by a One-Woman Wail which makes it ridiculous, yet somehow still manages to communicate the utter horror of eleven of that woman coming to laugh at you.

In one episode she pimp-slaps a stuck-up noble girl, who instantly becomes her submissive servant (bringing with her the equally masochistic bandit chief and sorcerer whom she "enthralled" in the exact same manner) and proceeds to teach both of them how to laugh exactly like her, leading to a scene where the three of them are laughing into the sunset. The horrified Lina promptly envisions a scene of dozens of people, young, old, women and men, all wearing Naga's outfit (including a geriatric old guy, a fat woman and a burly man) and all voicing their own equivalent of Naga's laugh.

Lina Inverse is pretty in a petite sort of way, but her temper is so hair-trigger that sometimes people are surprised she even has a normal tone of voice.

Excel Excel from Excel Saga fits this to a T, so much so that it caused English VA Jessica Calvello to blow out her vocal chords halfway through the series. The Japanese Excel isn't quite so bad, but Calvello apparently thought "sandpaper on chalkboard" was the right direction to take things, which had the aforementioned effect on her larynx.

Magical Girl Lyrical Nanoha StrikerS has cute, adorable Cheerful ChildVivio, who moments after being faced with the prospect of Nanoha leaving for a few hours to go to work, cried like a, well... cried like a real six-year old actually, which as anyone who had lived with one will tell you, isn't exactly the most pleasant sounding of things.

The title giant beast from My Neighbor Totoro is cute, but has a loud bellow some children find frightening.

Meru Otonashi from Sayonara, Zetsubou-Sensei appears to be an extremely shy girl who is practically mute and can only communicate with others via e-mails and cellphone texting. When she does send messages to others online, she turns out to be insulting and abusive. Eventually Meru is forced into a part of the classroom with no cellphone reception and when Kaere forces her to talk, the result is... not pretty.

Aoi from Hanamaru Kindergarten's Sakura class has watched her fishmonger parents at work for long enough that she can do quite the sales shout herself.

The mayor's son in Tiger & Bunny. Cute little baby, who cries loudly when left to be looked after by a group of rather clueless heroes (Kotetsu is a dad, but Sam wants his mummy and Kotetsu's child is a preteen so he hasn't taken care of babies in a while). Said baby is also telekinetic, so his screaming causes things to go flying.

Although a filler character, Kobato is a cute young woman with an ear-piercingly loud scream.

Also Perona's personal pet peeve. She adores all her macabre living stuffed animals (which she calls "cute"), but hates their monstrous voices and forbids them from talking. The cuter they are the less they're allowed to talk, such as her favorite companion, a man sized stuffed bear named Kumashi. For that matter, Perona herself is a pretty cute young woman, but her voice can get pretty loud and high-pitched.

Shirahoshi always has a very shrill cry, despite her arguably cute voice.

The protagonist of Aggressive Retsuko is a cute female red panda who sings metal songs in an angry male voice to express her rage at her annoying coworkers.

Comic Books

In Marvel Adventures: Super Heroes, being thrown into the "Kitten Cacophony" pit is Iron Man's Cool and Unusual Punishment for failing Kree Karaoke in an extreme sports contest. (Yes, really. We've got the picture up there to prove it.) For several panels after that, he is deaf.

Schecherazade, a small pet bird in Ralf König's Conrad and Paul, is taken for pet-sitting to the title character's home. She's very precious, but whenever she opens her beak, the "chirp" fills most of the page section. Trust it to her to completely kill any and all sex life going on in that apartment. Probably in the neighbouring flats too.

In Ghosts of the Past, sequel to Child of the Storm, a teenage and already very pretty Jean Grey's reaction to her much loved younger cousin, Harry being kidnapped involves literally going through the roof, then actually levitating off the ground to scream in the unfortunate Steve Rogers' face. Several scenes later, his ears are still ringing.

Films — Animation

The baby raccoon in Brother Bear 2 lets out a piercing scream of "MAMA!" after Nita gets her amulet back from it.

Subverted to comic effect in The Emperor's New Groove, where the main villain becomes an adorable white kitten with a shrill but harmless squeak of a voice.

The little "Psycho Teletubby" creatures on the alien planet. They also fit the Killer Rabbit trope, as they turn out to be noisy and vicious.

When the female Thermian Laliari is first introduced, her translator is broken but her humanoid disguise is otherwise still active. Suffice it to say, since they are based on undersea animals, the Thermians' native language is... screechy.

Lina Lamont from Singin' in the Rain. "... An' I CEAAAAAAN'T STEEEEEEAND 'im!" This is a major plot point, since she's a movie star at the time when sound films come into the mainstream.

Her actress, Jean Hagan, was actually a talented vocalist, as heard in scenes where Lina's spoken dialogue is being dubbed over to sound less shrilly.

The hooker from The Man with Two Brains. Gorgeous body, but her voice makes it all too easy to contemplate murdering her.

"Duke Duke Duke Duke of Oyul, Oyul, Oyul..."

If memory serves, the Desi Arnaz Jr. movie Marco had a mysterious, silent princess to whom Marco Polo was attracted... until they had a rendezvous, she opened her mouth... and had a screechy voice that shattered all his illusions, much like the above example.

Eve Draper from Hot Fuzz arguably counts, as she's your run o' the mill cute blond but has a 'very distinctive laugh'. Only natural as she is played by Lucy Punch, who tends to go for those types of characters anyway.

Big-Fat-Ugly-Bug-Face-Baby-Eating-O'Brien in Muppet Treasure Island has not only a rather ugly name but beautiful look — but also has a man's voice.

Officer Hooks from the Police Academy films has a light, soft, and very pleasant voice when she isn't angry. When she is angry, she terrifies even Hightower, the 8-foot cadet.

James Bond girls had a tendency to be like this towards the late 80's, the most notable example being Stacey Sutton played by Tanya Roberts (A View to a Kill), followed by Kara Milovy played by Maryam d'Abo (The Living Daylights).

Clara Bow, the It Girl, was considered the sexiest woman in film. According to urban legend her career died when sound film came into popularity. In reality, her voice work was considered decent, and her sound films were popular. It was a nervous breakdown from mental illness and a bad reputation with Hollywood insiders that killed her career.

Subverted slightly in Born Yesterday. Judy Holliday is a crooked tycoon's trophy mistress with a voice that can peel paint. She ends up educated by a tutor hired to "smarten her up." She uses her newfound smarts to take the tycoon to the cleaners and amazingly, even though it's still in the same register, by the end of the movie her voice isn't as near as annoying as it was in the beginning (Holliday got the Best Actress Oscar that year).

Madison from Splash. While she normally sounds fine, when she tries to speak her name in her native language (she's a mermaid) she ends up shattering the screens of all nearby televisions.

Gamebooks

The Jib-Jib of Fighting Fantasy can be heard for miles. It has ridiculously weak stats, but whatever's coming to investigate the racket might not...

Literature

In the Nero Wolfe novel Might As Well Be Dead, Archie describes a suspect like this: "It was hard to believe, the contrast between what my eyes saw and my ears heard. Any man would have been glad to walk down a theater aisle with her, but there would have to be an understanding that she would keep her mouth shut." She also drank gin and ginger ale, which Archie insists he "wouldn't drink to get the low-down on Lizzie Borden."

Harry Potter has a lot of creatures like this in Fantastic Beasts and Where to Find Them. For example, there's the Fwooper, a colorful bird whose call makes listeners go insane, and the Aughrey, another bird whose call is rumored to be the last thing you hear before you die (in truth, they just react to impending foul weather). One wizard, Uric the Oddball, decided to experiment by living in an aviary full of both birds, and thought he had died the morning the Aughrey were all crying. He then preceded to knock himself out cold by walking into wall because he thought he was a ghost, and suffered "a concussion of ten days' duration."

Subverted in The Patchwork Girl of Oz. The Woozy claims to be one of these, but when put to the test, has only a very small roar indeed.

This is applied to an entire sentient species in Alan Dean Foster's Taken trilogy—they're basically Cat Girls (even the guys), but have voices comparable to garbage disposals. In this case, symbolism rules, as they're initially quite charming and cute, but they're a Proud Warrior Race and their sanity is somewhat dubious.

In the Redwall series, Dorothea Duckfontein Dillworthy is a very sweet and pretty hare-girl who just happens to have the worst singing voice ever. Nobody has the heart to tell her.

In The Hobbit, Bilbo gives out a warning cry "which is surprisingly loud for a creature of their size."

In the Dr. Seuss story The Cat In The Hat Comes Back, the cat gets rid of a ring of pink cake icing in the tub by doffing his hat to reveal a smaller Cat A, who does the same for Cat B, on and on, who only spread the ring around and turn all the snow in the neighborhood pink - until Cat Z is revealed...he's microscopic in size, but under his hat is something called VOOM, which loudly cleans the mess up.

In Watership Down, Fiver, one of the smallest of the rabbits, falls into a psychic-coma during the climax. As he loses consciousness, he lets out such a terrible, alien sound it penetrates the burrow and scares the hraka out of the invading rabbits outside. Given what rabbit-cries typically sound like (See Real Life, below) that says a lot.

It was a small dog—the sort of animal from which you would have expected a noise like a squeaking slate-pencil; but it was simply baying. It had retired into a corner, and was leaning against the wall with bulging eyes; and every two seconds it chucked its head back in a kind of pained way and let out another terrific bellow.

In Mirabile, Leo raises an alien "bird" from the egg, and names it Mabob (short for "Thingamabob"). It's Ugly Cute, but equipped with a hundred-decibel inbuilt airhorn. GRONK!

Janice from Friends was very attractive, but had an annoyingly nasal voice.

Not to mention her laugh...

Or when she experiences labor pains...

Dr. Ken: Julie has a comedically high-pitched voice that gets even higher when she lies. But if the lie gets too big, her voice comes around the other side and drops an octave to a more normal pitch (aka Katie Simses's real voice).

Fran Drescher's voice in The Nanny. Or anywhere else, for that matter. She engages in a little Self-Deprecation in her guest appearance on a The Simpsons Halloween special where she played a golem who, upon hearing her own voice, describes it as "like a cat got caught in a blender". "Hello," indeed.

Saturday Night Live alumna Victoria Jackson is also known for being cute with a girlish, high-pitched voice that sounds whiny and irritating. Other female SNL cast members like this include: Rachel Dratch, Abby Elliott (especially when she plays Anna Faris, Joan Cusack, and Khloe Kardashian), Nasim Pedrad (especially when she plays Kim Kardashian), and the late Gilda Radner (often when she played little girl characters, like Judy Miller).

Scrubs has a Josephina, an "incredibly fun-sized intern", (roughly 4'10" and rotund) who is infamous around the hospital for having an impossibly high-pitched voice.

Kate from Robin Hood delivers her lines in a shrill, whiny, screechy voice. This may have been done to make her as annoying as humanly possible, since the actress speaks normally in other roles.

One episode of Unfabulous had the main character attempt to babysit a little girl. The girl's favorite pastime was to apparently run around the house screaming at the top of her lungs.

One Doctor Who companion, Victoria, had a notoriously powerful scream. In one episode, they're on an oil rig being attacked by killer seaweed, so the Doctor hooks a microphone up to a sonic gun, and has Victoria scream into it. This kills it.

Equally high-pitched, but never weaponized, was Mel's scream.

Donna was also known for screeching when annoyed (she was played by Catherine Tate, after all), though she did it less as her Character Development continued. Even the Doctor would lean away from her, wincing, when she got going.

Tallulah from "Daleks in Manhattan" and "Evolution of the Daleks" is an attractive woman, but her voice could peel paint.

In Will & Grace Karen (Megan Mulally) is physically painful. Her voice was relatively normal in the first few episodes, before Flanderization turned Karen from a Deadpan Snarker into the most outlandish character on the show.

Jool from Farscape has a scream that can literally melt metal. This is often used to amazing effect by other characters.

On Growing Pains Mike sees an extremely hot girl at a school dance. When he talks to her he's alarmed at her annoying high and squeaky voice, on top of not being very bright. Mike tries to put up with it because she's so gorgeous but finally can't take it after a while.

Milked for laughs on numerous occasions on Are You Being Served?, with the grating Cockney-accented voice of the otherwise pretty Miss Brahms.

Bernadette on 'The Big Bang Theory'', who has a pipsqueaky voice befitting of her tiny stature talking normally, but is a dead-ringer for Howard's screechy mom when she yells.

Someone off-screen: WHO IS IT?!

Sheldon: It's me, Sheldon, Mrs. Wolowitz!

Howard: That's not my mom, it's Bernadette.

Sheldon: Really? That's very unsettling.

On Seinfeld, Elaine hires Newman to kidnap a dog that has been barking loudly all night every night and keeping her awake. When she finally sees it in person, she is surprised to discover how small it is.

Nothing Jetta does turns crowds against her more than the squealing she makes when a match doesn't go her way.

Cherry Bomb

Amber Gertner:"I wish the collar bone injury had done something to the screechy voice, just saying."

The Beautiful Brenda, Famous B's valet on Lucha Underground, is certainly very attractive (if not very bright) but she has a voice that can strip the paint off the walls when she gets excited.

Tabletop Games

Old concept dating back to at least Red-book D&D basic edition. Shriekers are harmless-looking giant mushrooms, but if light (as, say, carried by adventurers exploring a dungeon) comes within so many feet of them, they start shrieking. Like with the aforementioned Jib-Jib, this isn't a good thing if there are more powerful monsters investigating the source of the racket...

In Escape from Monkey Island, the beautiful wooden figurehead of the Dainty Lady can be brought to life — turns out, she's got a voice like she's been smoking cigarettes since childhood, and she proceeds to grouse bitterly at Guybrush about her lot in life.

"PSYCHO BAAAAAAALLLLL!!!". Though it depends on which seiyuu Athena has. The worse ones were Moe Nagasaki (95) and early!Haruna Ikezawa (98, 99); now Ikezawa still voices her with a high tone, but not nearly as high as the start.

Yuri Sakazaki.

Rose Bernstein.

Momoko probably earned her way into here after XI.

Mai Shiranui actually started having a high-pitched but bearable tone in the Fatal Fury and early The King of Fighters games, but as time passed Akoya Sogi's voice got more and more high-pitched. When Ami Koshimizu took over, however, she lowered the pitch and now Mai sounds way better.

A rare male example is Sie Kensou. Around KOF 96, Eiji Yanou changed his pitch to try portraying him as more Hot-Blooded than before... and as a result, his voice became really childish for a guy supposed to be in his late teens. He had to tone it down around the start of the Ash Saga.

Guilty Gear has its own as well, in the form of Jam Kuradoberi. Listening to her voice for more than a hour will make your head explode.

Bridget actually started having a high-pitched but bearable tone in the original XX series, but when Yukiko Kato took over in the Accent Core series, his voice got more high-pitched to the point where it became ear-grating.

Even though we don't get to see it, Edy Nelson from Valkyria Chronicles found herself to be tone deaf, which causes her to cease her one-sided rivalry with Rosie and decide to become an actress instead. Her voice on both the Japanese and English tracks aren't bad to listen to, though.

We do get to see it in a sidequest in the sequel, Valkyria Chronicles II. It's pretty much exactly what you'd expect. Unless you're Anisette.

In Psychonauts, Bonita Soleil fits this to a "T", even having a small gag where she is crying to a recorded woman's voice. Something of note is that she is voiced by Stephen Stanton, who also voices Sasha Nein from the same game.

The Boncas from Warcraft offshoot War Wind are big rhino-like six legged cattle. Their children however, are clearly some mutant form of yappy dogs judging by the screeching they do when you attack them. Why would you ever want to attack such terrible things? Because they like to zip in and out of your buildings stealing resources, eating food, and smashing things randomly. Of course, you better be prepared because all that screeching will bring the whole herd close behind.

The Toads, in most games when they're voiced. Early Nintendo 64 games like Mario Party and Mario Kart 64 gave them cheerful childlike voices, then for some reason they decided to change the voice to being more high-pitched and very raspy and it's been that way ever since. note Compare Toad in MK 64 to Toad in MK Wii.

Princess Daisy is a cute young princess like Peach. However, she's such a Genki Girl that she practically screams many of her lines, especially in later titles.

Baby Mario in Yoshi's Island. One review called Mario's cry perhaps the Most Annoying Sound in video games. In Yoshi's Island DS Baby Peach, Donkey Kong, Wario and Bowser respectively all have different cries. This case is justified and enforced; playtesters failed to realize that if you leave Baby Mario alone long enough, bad things happen, so the developers intentionally made Baby Mario's cries loud and grating, so the player would hurry up and get him back before it was too late.

Anyone who remembers the first Ecco the Dolphin game for Genesis will remember the -very- shrill cry that the cute little dolphin character screamed when he got hit by an enemy. The sound was so annoying to many players that it was numbed down in Tides of Time.

In story, Misha from Katawa Shoujo. The teacher even outright states she's got volume control problems and it's mentioned several times that she's, well, loud. Since the game is set in a school for the disabled and Misha's exact disability was unknown until the full version was released, many fans leaned towards partial deafness, though this was Jossed in the final version which explains she's there to learn sign language.

The Pokémon Whismur has quite a loud crying volume for such a otherwise quiet and cute Mon (in the Pokédex, it's said that when Whismur starts crying, it's so loud that it startles itself and that makes it cryeven louder!). It emphasizes much less on the cute and more of the cacophony when it evolves into the appropriately named Loudred, then Exploud.

Furthermore, the moves Hyper Voice and Uproar, and Round, play on this trope, as they can be learned by such cute Mons as Jigglypuff and Rotom.

During one of the last levels in Hitman: Blood Money, there is a beautiful and Stripperific singer in an angel costume, who has an absolutely horrible voice and sings every single note off key. As it turns out, she is an assassin who murdered the original singer in an attempt to get to you.

In Fire Emblem Awakening, Sumia's daughter Cynthia. Her introduction, should Chrom recruit her and if he's her father, involves her yelling in his ear. Indeed, one of her regular voice clips is a very childlike-sounding and loud "UWAAAAH!"

Dragon Quest VIII has the boss Don Mole, who stole a harp you need. His music is so bad that it one of his lackeys passed out standing up from the pain. In battle, his music can confuse the whole party and his sidekicks too. Continuing the gag, later you find a journal in Castle Argonia that describes birds falling out of the air and deer and rabbits writhing on the ground foaming at the mouth at the horrible sound of his music.

Ghost Trick has Missile, an adorably fluffy Pomeranian who loves to bark. As expected of a small yappy dog, when he speaks in spirit form, he has No Indoor Voice.

Yordles in League of Legends are known to have a relatively high-pitch voice, especially Teemo, where many players find his voice acting to be adorably annoying. Another yordle who fits the bill is Gnar, being an ancient yordle child who breaks free from being encased in true ice eons ago. The only two yordles that don't fit into this bill are Poppy (a serious-minded Ambadassador to Demacia) and Rumble (a very egotistical and arrogant yordle), where their voices are much deeper than a typical yordle.

In Drakensang 2: River of Time one can buy a roaring hamster (German: Brüllhamster) whose roar is said to be loud enough to scare monsters away. The only chance you get to hear the roar, though, is when you Open the critter as if to read a book

Cream the Rabbit, very much The Cutie and a Cheerful Child,has an expectedly high-pitched voice in the Japanese voice acting. All three of her English voice actors aim for a similarly high pitch to varying results, sometimes nailing it, sometimes sounding more shrill than lovable.

In Sonic Heroes, Charmy somehow manages to be even higher-pitched than Cream, even though he's supposed to be a young boy.

Batman: Arkham Origins gives us Tracey Buxton, Penguin's second-in-command and one half of his Paid Harem. She's a very attractive blonde with a squaking voice and heavy Cockney accent like her boss.

Web Comics

The Creepy Black Cat in the Girly comic is kind of cute (for a cat whose back of the head can't be told from its front), but when it meows...

The Inexplicable Adventures of Bob!: Snookums the tentacle bunny is little and cute, but also very heavy, so when he hops toward you the accompanying noise is WHAM! WHAM! WHAM! WHAM!

In this strip from Scandinavia and the World, where Sister America asks Denmark why Danish babies cry so infrequently. He brings out "the quietest baby" he has, which just sits there screaming its head off for the rest of the strip, for no discernible reason, much to Sister America's horror. Denmark is completely oblivious to how loud the baby is, and insists that this is normal.

In the Scamalot episode "Hong Kong", James mentions his plans to bring three small dogs with him when he stays at Cho's house.

Western Animation

The Trope Inspirer was a cute little bird, something like a Tawny Frogmouth, in the "The Swamp" episode of Avatar: The Last Airbender. It is all fluffy and precious, and then it emits a loud call that sounds disconcertingly like a human screaming in terror.

This is the basis of the MGM Oneshot Cartoon "Little Gravel Voice"; the short is centered on a little donkey who is very cute and friendly, but his bray is not only extremely obnoxious (and keeps botching his attempts to befriend the local animals), but literally harmful, as the wolf it encounters later finds out the hard way. Even after he wins over the other animals by scaring off the wolf, they still tie up his snout with his ears, just so they won't have to hear his braying anymore.

Dr. Girlfriend from The Venture Bros. looks like Jackie Onassis but sounds rather like Harvey Fierstein. She says it's from smoking a lot, but has inspired rumors that she's transgender.

The episode "The Frying Game" had the endangered screaming caterpillar (or "screamapillar"). It is cute when not screaming... or laughing at Homer being executed....

In "Mr. Spritz Goes to Washington", Mayor Quimby redirects airplane traffic away from the motel where he conducts his affairs so he can hear his partner's (Miss Springfield) voice. When he discovers that she falls under this trope, Quimby laments "Now I regret buying you that opera house!"

The above is a reference to Citizen Kane, where Kane uses his fortune to finance his mistress's opera career — until everyone else finds out that her singing voice is horrendously mediocre.

"Margical History Tour": During the story of King Henry VIII, Henry (Homer) is looking for a new queen, spotting an attractive woman in the corner. Cut to their wedding, and when she gives her vows, she speaks in a shaky nasal voice. Henry has her executed immediately after the wedding.

A relatively early example in animation is the Bugs Bunny short Little Red Riding Rabbit. Little Red was extremely loud and boisterous, with a grating voice. She annoyed Bugs and the Big Bad Wolf so much, it got to the point where they decided to punish her (and since she annoys the audience too, it's a pretty satisfactory ending).

Red: GRANDMA! HEY, GRANDMA!

Bugs: I'll do it, but I'll probably hate myself in the morning.

Cue Red switching places with the Wolf holding up the mountain of junk over a shovel of hot coal

There was also a despondent duckling with a briefcase who, whenever Daffy Duck tried to comfort him or ask what was inside, would shout in a loud man's voice, NYAAAAAAAH, SHUT UP!!! By the end of the short, Daffy and the hunter chasing him have had enough of the little Jerkass, so they just take the briefcase and open it revealing something they both dread: a THE END title card!

Bob Clampett seems to have enjoyed this gag. Tweety Bird and other cute little creatures in his shorts could have a suddenly very loud voice. This is also one of his Distaff CounterpartSweety Bird's signature gags.

Aw, da poor puddy tat. He fall down an' go... BOOM!

Another Looney Tunes short featured a bird whose cry for some reason, sounds like an old-timey car horn.

2 Stupid Dogs had a recurring character based on the aforementioned Little Red Riding Hood. Her voice tended to fluctuate between a voice you'd expect from a young girl and something akin to a foghorn that learned English.

Felix the Cat character Vavoom was a cute little Eskimo fellow who could be called upon to make a Sonic Attack by saying his name. Walls would shatter. Mountains could be tunneled through if he said his name repeatedly.

Weasel from The Animals of Farthing Wood. Her voice is annoying to other animals except for another weasel, Measly, who is attracted to her.

In an episode of Rocko's Modern Life, "Day of the Flecko", while Rocko is trying to sleep, a cute little bird flies into a tree branch, chirping. But soon its chirps become louder and more obnoxious to the point of yelling "CHOIP! CHOIP! CHOIP!" Rocko retaliates with a Big "SHUT UP!", causing the bird to fall from the tree.

Sweetie Belle is a cute little unicorn filly who proves to be this in the episode "Stare Master". She's actually a very good singer, but as Fluttershy discovers, also a very loud one. Especially if she starts singing "99 Buckets of Oats on the Wall".

Sweetie's older sister Rarity usually affects a very nice mid-Atlantic-accented speech. Get her to whining, however, and you'll give up carts full of jewels to be rid of her. Turns out she knows it and uses that voice on purpose to invoke Pity the Kidnapper.

Along with Sweetie Belle are her two friends Apple Bloom and Scootaloo. The three of them make up the "Cutie Mark Crusaders", and whenever all three yell at once the other ponies around wince and/or have their manes blown by the force of their yelling.

And then there's the Pinkie Clones from "Too Many Pinkie Pies", oh dear lord. While Pinkie Pie's enthusiasm and general playfulness can be considered adorable, an army them repeatedly shouting "FUN! FUN! FUN!" while tearing Ponyville apart would drive anyone insane.

In "Make New Friends but Keep Discord", all three Cutie Mark Crusaders loudly rejoicing in unison is enough for Discord to plug his ears with his own horns. Yup, pointy ends first; of course he's a spirit of chaos, so it isn't something that can harm him.

The Powerpuff Girls. In "Nuthin' Special," Buttercup tries to find her special power and does a sonic scream. She is matched by Blossom and Bubbles. The Townsville folk seem to be more interested in this sibling contest than in the collateral damage it's causing. Bubbles as well, when she's upset. "HE'S MAKING NEW POWERPUFF GIRLS!!!"

Rigby of Regular Show is lovable, but is nevertheless prone to anger whenever he's reminded of how short and weak he is. He will frequently yell out STOP TALKING! when he can't take it anymore.

Caitlin's speaking voice is fine when she's calm, but she has a seriously loud, ear-piercing scream, and her bawling can be grating as well.

The Khaki Barn clones all have childish, high pitched voices, and they tend to group squee, which annoys Nikki to no end.

Brittany Taylor from Daria. Her high-pitched voice can make it hard to understand her sometimes, especially when she is hysterical. However, in "The Old and the Beautiful", residents at a retirement home take a liking to her voice.

The Berbils from both versions of Thunder Cats. Adorable, fuzzy little robot bears... who speak in an eardrum-torturing synthesizer voice.

Gus from Recess is adorable, and his speaking voice sounds fine when he's calm. When he starts screaming, especially in "Germ Warfare", it gets annoying.

In her Vocal Evolution, Courtney's voice became more high pitched and childish-sounding, particularly whenever she is crying.

Sierra's high pitched voice can be quite annoying whenever she is hysterical.

In Revenge of the Island, pre-mutation Dakota has a rather high pitched shriek and whiny speaking voice.

Zoey's cries for help can be rather grating, although her normal speaking voice is more bearable.

In Pahkitew Island, Ella is an adorablefaux-princess; however, her teammates find her constant singing to be annoying, especially Sugar. Chris is also annoyed by Ella's singing to the point where he threatens to boot Ella from the show if she sings again.

Harley Quinn is pretty cute both in and out of costume in a Perky Female Minion way, but her voice provided by Arleen Sorkin is very nasally and screechy. Of course, this is intentional and based on Rule of Funny, and the episode showing her origin shows that she's capable of speaking in a more normal voice and only switched to the screechy one once she donned the costume.

In Barbie and the Secret Door, Malucia's singing is so loud and high-pitched it shatters Grodlin's glasses while he's busy covering his ears.

Elsa the ghost angelfish from the "Monster Tail" segments of "Wake, Rattle, and Roll" she has a very sweet and soft voice but she shouts at the end of most of her sentences.

Steven Universe is an adorable little boy, but he shouts most of his lines.

Ruby Gloom: Misery sure is adorable but her banshee wailing can shatter glass miles away.

In special Toot & Puddle: I'll Be Home for Christmas, this is true of all of the puppies except for "Golden," named such because "Silence is golden."

In Defenders of the Earth, Ming tried to wipe out the zuffoids because he couldn't stand the incessant singsong chant they produce when several of them get together. Zuffy was thought to be the only zuffoid to have escaped the massacre, but, towards the end of the "Prince Kro-Tan" arc, the Defenders discover a whole colony of zuffoids on Mongo and use their chant as a weapon against the Monster of the Week. However, Mandrake at least seems to share Ming's sentiments about the noise:

That's why Ming tried to destroy all the zuffoids!

Olga Pataki of Hey Arnold! has a very grating high-pitched voice, especially when she gets excited or cries.

Real Life — Animals

There are several cat breeds with rather loud or grating meows.

In particular, Siamese cats deserve a category all their own for their voices. They sound like they have an embedded caps lock key. While other cats may get louder, the Siamese still takes the prize because their cry is almost exactly at the same pitch as crying human babies, a sound most humans are sensitive to and find hard to block out (see above). This video showcases what happens when two of them get going at the same time, and even when they're kittens they can produce some pretty impressive meows.

Bengals are roughly equivalent to three to five Siamese in raucousness. The fact that they're literally part wildcat probably helps on this front.

When a cat goes into heat and starts yowling. God help you if you're trying to get some sleep.

Some cats have a sort of disorder that has them in heat for months at a time, no breaks. It's not only loud as hell but can end with your cat dead.

One cat even holds the record for the loudest purr ever, at roughly 70 decibels, roughly as loud as the dishwasher.

Domesticated cats in general, actually. Cats don't even "meow" to each other (aside from kittens meowing to their mothers); they reserve meowing to use towards humans, who are particularly sensitive to it, probably because a cat's meow is at about the same frequency of a human baby's cry. In general, communication between cats relies mostly on body language, but seeing as we humans (from cats' point of view) fail at body language, cats resort to vocal means of grabbing our attention, hence the meowing they don't even use between each other.

Many breeds of dogs, and in many cases this has been bred into them deliberately.

The smaller breeds of dog tend to have high pitched barks or disconcertingly loud howls. They are often nicknamed "yap dogs".

That piercing howl-bark you can hear three blocks away? Probably a beagle. There's a reason they were bred for hunting.

The Dachshund is a breed bred to have a loud and fierce bark like it was at least five times its actual size. Which it proceeds to do whenever passersby — even people it has met before on friendly terms — walk past its owner's house. There's a saying among dog owners: "Rottweilers will bark when someone comes up to your fence, but Dachshunds will bark when someone comes within fifty feet of the fence." Since Dachshunds were originally bred to take on badgers in their own holes, it's the rare case where the dog's bark is actually not writing checks its bite can't cash.

Golden Retriever mixes can be this way. They tend to embody Keet, but if someone's at the door (or Hell, within 50 feet of the door), expect lots of barking.

The Lhasa Apso gains extra credit for being explicitly bred as a temple guard dog and living alarm, rather than hunter or retriever like most small dogs: it combines a very loud bark with a distrust of strangers. One of the Lhasa Apso's old alternate names translated to "Roaring Lion Guardian" or something similar.

The Basenji breed may not be able to bark, but as many videos on youtube will attest, their howling "yodel" is no less agonizing, especially if there's more than one of them. And it's so hard to make them stop once they get going.

Huskies have similar yodeling skills to Basenjis, though they can also combine them with what can only be described as: Chewbacca sounds. They are also similarly difficult to calm down once they're committed to making noise, especially if there's more than one.

The Bouvier des Flandres is another one of those protective dogs that will bark at anything within eyesight. It's a beautiful dog, but IT SOUNDS LIKE BARITONE THUNDER.

Keeshonden/ Wolfspitzen: fluffy, puffy, usually wolfy-coloured bundles of medium-sized... LOUDNESS (particularly in, but not restricted to, pack situations). Specifically bred to have this big bark in a medium package as a kind of... user-friendly (read "not eating you out of house and home") alarm-system you could find other work for (like dragging stuff) at a pinch. No, really. This noise was deliberate: has a great vocal range of other sounds not displayed here — which, is no help if you get one love-sick pining/ howling at night.

Flamingos. The noise they make is not unlike the trombone section of a really bad jazz band tuning up before the show...except that is the show.

Peacocks are beautiful and stately but "grating beyond all possible belief" doesn't begin to describe the noise they make.

There is a very good reason for this: Howlers eat mostly leaves, which are very low in nutrients. As a result, they are more sedentary then other monkeys due to having less energy to expend on moving around. They also need larger territories to get all the leaves they need. The problem is how to defend a large territory against other troops when you can't move fast. The Howler's solution is to make as much noise as possible to proclaim their territories without engaging in actual fights with other troops.

While on the subject of noisy primates, the Siamang is a gibbon that whoops and hollers its fool head off, amplified by an inflatable sac in its throat.

The House Wren is no longer than your index finger, but his song can be heard from at least five backyards away. Fortunately, the song is cute too. Many wrens share these traits.

Mockingbirds also have a very pleasing song... most of the time. But desperate Mockingbird bachelors resort to singing at midnight to get attention from the ladieeez. Singing LOUDLY at midnight. And thanks to modern technology, some mockingbirds have taken to imitate cell phone ring tones, car alarms, and power tools.

God help you when one you get one that's previously lived outside a house with a constantly crying child in residence.

The rare Australian species known as lyrebirds are basically mockingbirds Up to 11. The Albert's Lyrebird in particular is known to imitate not just all of the local birdcalls AND all the things listed above, but human voices, traffic, and chainsaws. Even when they're not mimicking, they have another call that consists of drum-like booming that can be heard for kilometers around.

Any and all parrots. Even budgerigars ("parakeets") can get grating with their constant chattering, but did you know that the large species of cockatoo can achieve decibel levels that exceed that of a jet engine? And then there's the sun conure; its near-rainbow of orange, yellow, green, and blue feathers is definitely gorgeous, and it's got a completely engaging playful personality. But this 12" long bird has a scream that feels rather like someone is hammering a white-hot railroad spike into your ear. And yes, they can cause temporary deafness at close range. No wonder screaming problems are one of the biggest reasons why a parrot gets dumped in rescue.

Oh god, budgies. Never mind the constant chattering. It's the screeching that you have to watch out for. It's like the sound of nails on a chalkboard, machinegunned into your ears.

The screeching is soft and fluffy compared to the sound of a budgerigar that is trying to make friends with the most boring bird in the garden. The most boring bird in the garden goes "squeak", quietly, and inside the house is inaudible to human ears. The budgie then replies, at a volume calculated to get through the closed windows and be clearly audible outside. SQUEAK. It is so loud that you can hear your ears' AGC mechanism thumping in and out. And it happens every 10 seconds and goes on and on and on and on and on...

If a parrot is left alone for a long time, it will get bored...and a bored parrot often lets out ear-piercing screeches, hoping to catch the attention of a nearby person or bird.

Eurasian bittern, aka great bittern. It is medium-sized, has fluffy feathers, and is relatively quiet. But when the mating season comes, the males will make sounds that would put a bass drum in shame. In the middle of the night, no less. And they can be heard for 2 to 4 kilometers around.

Rabbits are fairly notorious for this sort of behavior. They are normally pretty silent, but will punish their potential enemies by producing a sound that will scar you for life. This is actually an effective group defense. The sound carries amazingly and acts as a massive dinner bell for pretty much all predators, meaning whatever caught it is likely to have its meal interrupted by something else. This might cause the predator to drop the rabbit, and may put it off hunting them again.

Peaceful serenity is at least one thing that's definitely not better with penguins. At least not South African Penguins, also known as Jackass Penguins thanks to a call that sounds like a bad-tempered donkey. The noises other penguins make are endearing, but not exactly conductive to peace.

In the bird world, the King of Disproportionate Cacophony is the European Starling. His... song (to human ears, it sounds more like a series of ultrasonic squeals and shrieks) is grating to anyone who is not a Starling at any hour of the day. But especially at five in the morning. Right outside your bedroom window.

The endangered Noisy Scrub Bird of south-west Australia is very hard to see but a cinch to hear, if one is skulking in the bushes near you and calls, it's almost deafening.

Cicadas. Especially, as with the Starling, for people who are sensitive to ultrasonic sounds. Tell us you'd expect something that looks like this to make such a racket.

Australians will likely be familiar with the deep croaking sounds made by Bladder Cicadas at dusk in the summer. If your garden happens to be one they like, they can get loud enough that you'll want to close the windows at dusk to muffle the noise they make.

The regular sound of South-East Asian rainforest is not birds chirping or animals calling, it's the constant high pitched whine of cicadas. It's quite awful to experience.

And the weird thing? Some breeds of cicadas have cries that can't be transmitted via cell phone. Now try explaining to the person on the other end why you just screamed, "SHUT UP!"

These are worse in urban areas of Japan, because the taller buildings have a tendency to not only echo the cicada sounds, but amplify them as well. As someone who used to live near a 10 story apartment complex, they got so loud one morning they were effective in making sure I was awake and stayed that way.

Australia has a number of distinctive examples (aside from the cicadas mentioned above):

When agitated, sugar gliders make a noise called "crabbing", which can be an extremely disconcerting sound coming from a creature smaller than your hand.

Australian ravens. The familiar Corvus corax Ravens of the northern hemisphere are actually rather quiet, and their distinctive soft "Grok-grok" flight calls might even be considered soothing. Australian corvids, on the other hand... some say they sound like little kids, others say they sound more like immensely upset cats or a mistuned kazoo, but generally everyone agrees their "GAWWWWWWH" call is loud and too ridiculous to ignore.

Kookaburras might have one of the most distinctive and well known calls in the bird kingdom. It's not even annoying to listen to.

On the much more obnoxious front, they also have numerous species of parrots, mentioned above. Rainbow Lorikeets bear special mention for being a) absolutely gorgeous and b) prone to gathering in large numbers in wooded areas and shrieking their little heads off.

Tasmanian Devils are much cuter than their Looney Tunes counterpart, but they are just as guttural, if not more so.

Brushtail possums resemble a cross between a monkey and a squirrel, and they have been known to make creepy nightmarish sounds.

Even kangaroos, which again, are a normally quiet species of animal, can be guttural if provoked into making some noise.

Crickets might not be very cute, but the amount of noise they produce is entirely disproportionate to their size.

Woodpeckers get honorable mention here. They don't usually sing much, but the amount of noise they can produce with their pecking can be stunning.

The spring peeper. A frog no longer than the end of your finger, which manages to be one of the loudest animals in the world.

Shetland Sheepdogs are such beautiful animals that it ALMOST makes up for the noise.

One of the first filmed instances of a panda giving birth showed a possible reason why female pandas often lose their first infants. The newborn panda was blind, naked, helpless, the size of a stick of butter, and so amazingly loud, its mom practically fled the birthing chamber in terror when it started squealing its lungs out!

Guinea fowl are used as an intruder alarm system in some small villages or farms in Africa, because the obnoxiously loud noise they will make if bothered during the night will awaken the sleeping family/villagers to the danger as well. There's no such thing as stealth when sneaking past guineas...

Quails. They're not all that much larger than a goose egg, but that trilling noise they make carries further than you'd think.

You know those horrific, blood-curdling screams that the Nazgul made? The basis for that sound effect is the screaming of script-writer Fran Walsh, Peter Jackson's partner.

Guinea pigs are utterly adorable, and very, very loud. And that particular sound is the one they make when they're happy about something or want to be held.

An editor on Cracked.com mentioned that while red foxes are cute, their calls sound like a demon raping a baby. Their calls are hideous. Behold.

Fisher cats make similar sounds (to the point that they're often mistaken for foxes and vice-versa) which is startling considering that fisher cats look like big weasels.

The Eurasian Blackbird (not to be confused with American Blackbirds) is a pretty-looking bird, and the males, when they sing during mating season, are well-known for some of natures most Awesome Music. BUT... both sexes, all-year-long, are notorious for being the NervousWrecks of the bird world, and they are constantly shouting their alarm calls - which range from a sharp, endlessly repeated "SNIP!!! SNIP!!!" to an ear-piercing, shrill yell.

The Birds of Paradise, named so because of their stunning plumage, have calls that... fall a bit short of their name. Especially during mating season.

Hamsters are usually very quiet, but can be pretty noisy when angry or frightened. You'd expect a hamster to squeak like a rat or mouse, right? Wrong.

Tree hyraxes look like the lovable lovechild of a love triangle between a small dog, a guinea pig, and a bear. Their nocturnal call is comparable to the screams of a human woman undergoing prolonged physical torture.

Possibly the most adorable amongst all penguins is the little penguin, also known as the little blue penguin. However, the sounds they make are most definitely not. While penguins are not a lot known for beautiful vocalizations, little penguins make a call that sounds similar to the braying of a donkey. A loud donkey.

Ocelots are beautiful felines. When excited, they make a sound that resembles an angry zombie. Makes more sense when you consider purring on housecats, and then ramp it up accordingly.

Cheetahs and Mountain Lions are the two largest of the small cats and can't roar. Both, on average, outweigh a Leopard (which can roar) and are several times more massive than an Ocelot. Both Cheetahs an Mountain Lions can purr and, when a tame one is petted by a human they are comfortable with, their purrs sound like a very loud and never-ending low pitch growl.

When they roost wherever they are not wanted, barn swallows. Their chirping while dive bombing any threats is not only annoying but can be downright scary at times.

While male mallards are usually quiet, females quack rather loudly, especially if there's more than 3 of them.

Geese, too, are also capable of making loud honking noises that some people think of as a nuisance. Like guinea fowl, geese were also used as guard birds for their loud honking as well as their aggression towards intruders.

Adult pigeons make soft cooing noises that can be considered soothing, but the same can't be said for pigeon nestlings, who make high-pitched squealing noises that can be heard from a tall tree or even a building.

The Great Kiskadee. The sound it makes is not unlike a squeaky toy, only much louder.

Rufous-vented Cachalacas, or guacharacas as they're commonly known. They look rather cute, if a bit silly at times. And then they start belting out a call that sounds like a cross between an angry parrot and a hacksaw (depending on the area, there'll be more of one or the other) that can be heard over a mile away. Worse, they like to start at around 5 AM.

The Otamatone, a Japanese musical instrument, is shaped like a cross between a tadpole and musical note, and sounds like this.

This trope is what killed the world's first talking dolls, among other things. In addition to being expensive to an ungodly degree (it cost a typical middle-class working man a whole weeks salary to afford one), the Edison Talking Doll's speaking mechanism was a wax cylinder recording. They typically sounded like this. Surprisingly, it got worse. The wax recordings degraded rapidly, so when little Clementine and Emma finally got over the horror of the doll working perfectly fine and played it a few times, they would wind it up one day only to find it making a horrifying metal-on-metal scraping noise. Edison ended up gutting them of their sound-making equipment and sold them as regular dolls at a loss.

Community

Tropes HQ

TVTropes is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 3.0 Unported License. Permissions beyond the scope of this license may be available from thestaff@tvtropes.org. Privacy Policy